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🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Nov 4, 2023 04:07 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 08:15 AM:

If there are 20 variants amongst the candidates that fail to meet the requirement of a computer opponent, there will be no incentive to provide one if there is no guarantee it will be featured.

If that's true, then it's a wonder how anyone has previously found the incentive to program any game at all. Yet we somehow have almost a 1000 pages featuring games programmed for Zillions-of-Games, not to mention various other programs and Interactive Diagrams for playing various Chess variants. Clearly, interest in playing a game has sometimes provided people with the incentive to provide computer opponents. And, in fact, the availability of a computer opponent serves as a sign of interest in the peer-review process. So, if someone would be motivated to program a game only if it were guaranteed to be featured, that does not seem to suggest much interest in the game. I would think that if someone wished a game to be featured, he would also be interested in having it programmed, regardless of whether we featured it. Also, it should be evident that making a computer opponent available takes a game one step closer to being eligible, and once a game is eligible, it has a better chance of being featured than it previously had.

For games like HectoChess, with no unorthodox rules other than the piece moves, computer opponents that play them can be created in a matter of minutes, with the aid of configurable variant engines like Fairy-Max, Sjaak II, Nebiyu or Fairy-Stockfish. If you use guestimated piece values (as ZoG would do anyway). Creating rule-enforcing GC presets is also only a matter of minutes for such variants, with the aid of the Play-Test Applet.

One of the main reasons behind our lack of support for Duck Chess is that it is a multi-move variant, and these are trickier to program on Game Courier. Nevertheless, I have programmed multi-move variants for it before, and I have a tutorial on How to Program Multi-Move Variants for Game Courier. Someone with sufficient interest in Duck Chess should be able to follow the tutorial and program the game. Although it would be easy to program for Zillions-of-Games, it would seem that the people who are most interested in it do not use Zillions-of-Games. You have hinted that you don't use it, and Duck Chess is mainly available on other platforms.

I think we should seriously consider providing downloads of configuration files for these stronger engines, rather than ZRF files that almost no one can use

There is no need to do one instead of the other when we can do both. Personally, I have no experience creating configuration files for stronger engines. But if others are able to do it, we can allow them to. Many people use Zillions-of-Games, and even if you don't, the ZRF files are for those who do.


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